Spectacular and a little spooky; Ban.jo, an iOS/Android app that launched last summer, is startling in what it’s able to give the user: the realtime whereabouts of any friends who have location services active for any of (now five) different social media platforms.

Ban.jo is pretty simple to use, in part thanks to its just-updated interface. Even before adding social networks, users can see other users close by who have location services turned on for one of the five networks — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google and Foursquare, the latter three being added in the new update. You can see how the service works via the web-based simulation here.

The real fun begins after signing in to any of the five services through the Ban.jo app — because once that’s done, you can set alarms that’ll activate if any of your friends come within a definable radius around your location. And because Ban.jo itself doesn’t actually broadcast your location — it merely aggregates and relays locations from the services it links with — your friends don’t have to be logged in to the Ban.jo service for it to work. Just you.

There’re other cool features too, like being able to save images you see on Ban.jo to your iCloud photostream, and viewing nearby updates from the various services — which reminds me a little of Localscope.

this is awesome, but noone wants to use these apps that are an individual social network. if it was integrated into Facebook or something, that’d be awesome. But what are the chances of enough people in one area signing up for this to make it function well? It’s like that “police scanner” app where you “share” where the cop you just passed was with a social network, and they get to be warned… but not if no one uses it!

nrylanb

Your friends don’t have to sign up for it to notify you, it pulls the info from your accounts that you link to the app. it also tells me people who are near by that aren’t my friends. I don’t think all of them are using the app but I could be wrong.

About the author

When he was eight, Eli Milchman came home from frolicking in the Veld one day and was given an Atari 400. Since then, his fascination with technology has made him an intrepid early adopter of whatever charming new contraption crosses his path — which explains why he's Cult of Mac's test editor-at-large. He calls San Francisco home, where he works as a journalist and photographer. Eli has contributed to the pages of Wired.com and BIKE Magazine, among others. Hang with him on Twitter.

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